bad TechRepublic ordering experience

Last Friday, I ordered a book that was advertised in a TechRepublic email. I got a confirmation email from them with a confirmation number and some contact info if I had questions about my order. I needed to change the shipping address for the orderand sent an email to the alias in my confirmation email on Sunday. As of Wednesday, I haven't gotten any response at all to that email.

I called the voice number in my confirmation email and talked to someone who said that my confirmation numberwas not anything they could use to look up my order. She also said that they didn't have access to the web system and depended upon the order arriving in her system for viewing 72 business hours after it has been placed. She offered to call me back the next day and let me know if the order showed up.

The next day, after she did not follow up with me, I called again. I spoke to another person who said that I should just check with my credit card company to see if the order had been charged tome. She also suggested that since another customer had a problem where an order got lost from the web to their system, I may just want to re-place my order with her over the phone even though we haven't confirmed anything at all about my original order's status.

Needless to say, there is a huge disconnect between the content of the TechRepublic sites and the way in which they run (or outsource) their ecommerce business.

Buyer beware!